Interesting fact: The global video conferencing market was worth a whopping $7.65 billion in 2022. Experts predict that by 2030 this figure could reach 18.56 billion because the average annual growth rate as of today is 11.71%. Note: we are talking specifically about conferencing tools, and not about video communication in general. If we take into account the entire video communications market, the numbers will be many times higher.
Today, we'll not really talk about money but about how the video chat usage trends have changed in general and what they look like in 2023. The way people communicated five years ago is quite different from what we see today. Let's figure it out!
The main trends in video communication in 2023: professional tools and random video chats
-
Trend #1: Ease of communication
On the contrary, in the era of new technologies and complex software solutions, people strive for simplicity. Nobody wants to deal with cumbersome interfaces, a huge number of settings, and the like. Most people just want things to work! A few clicks and you are already communicating with a person via video. Therefore, in today's world, the developers of video communication services are trying to simplify everything that can be simplified as much as possible. Most of them do it quite well.
-
Trend #2: Use of professional video tools for "non-professional" communication
Many niche video services were originally tailored for specific tasks. Zoom is for video conferencing, Discord is for team video gaming, Slack is for solving work tasks and team collaboration. However, we can see that all these services are very actively used for "household" purposes such as talking with relatives, holding an online party with friends, and so on. The developers of such services are trying to adapt to a wide audience and add features that were not originally laid down for such reasons.
-
Trend #3: Rise in popularity of random online video chats
This is quite an interesting trend, video chats are regaining popularity recently in many respects ahead of well-known dating sites and applications. This is not surprising. Communication is simpler, more convenient, faster, and most importantly, cheaper with this format. No expensive premium plans and an abundance of paid features. Everything is available either completely free of charge or at a very attractive subscription price.
Among the most popular video chats, we can name the following:
-
LiveMe: This is not like a classic online video chat, but more of a video streaming platform for smartphones. You can host your own broadcasts or view streams of other users. If you like this format, we recommend you try it.
-
CooMeet: This is a unique random video chat that offers users an error-free gender filter. CooMeet has handy apps for iOS and Android, a built-in message translator, and an affiliate program. Additionally, it has excellent moderation and support service.
-
Bazoocam: This is a minimalistic and very simple video chat with almost no search settings, but there are built-in online mini-games and its own video streaming service.
-
Tinychat: This is a popular service for video broadcasting. Its main feature is the ability to search for video streams from nearby users.
-
Chatous: This is an online video chat focused primarily on iOS and Android smartphones. The interesting functions include searching for interlocutors by interest using the appropriate hashtags.
Certainly, this is only a small part of the video chats worthy of your attention. Nonetheless, if you are choosing a platform for video communication right now, we recommend that you pay attention to the listed online platforms. They have proven themselves well and offer very decent functionality. Most importantly, they have a large and active audience. You will definitely like it!
-
Trend #4: Using artificial intelligence (AI) in video chats
All sorts of neural networks and artificial intelligence allow you to take video communication to a whole new level, making it more comfortable, interesting, and safer. There are a lot of options! You can change the background behind you, use AR masks, change your voice, remove all extraneous noise, enable the simultaneous translation of the conversation into the selected language, and much more.
Surely, in the near future, we will see a lot of options for using artificial intelligence in video chats. However, today, some technologies are amazing.
-
Trend #5: Taking care of digital security
You must admit that few people were seriously worried about digital security in the past. Many people used the same passwords on all sites and applications, no one was hiding their location or even their phone number. However, times have changed, and digital security is becoming a priority!
Currently, the generally accepted rules have become the use of two-factor authentication, the generation of complex passwords by special services, and so on. This is a very important and positive tendency indeed. This will definitely develop in the future.
-
Trend #6: Having first dates online
Previously, users sought to transfer communication from online to offline as soon as possible, especially if the acquaintance initially took place on a dating site or video chat. Currently, such haste is also a thing of the past. Users prefer to know each other better by spending more time online via video communication because this is one of the most successful ways to know a person better and understand whether you want to transfer communication with them offline. Therefore, we advise you not to rush to go offline but to devote more time to online dating.
-
Trend #7: Integration of video chats into other applications and services
It seems that until quite recently, the most common way to communicate via video was using Skype. Today, video chats are integrated into almost all popular web services - from the usual instant messengers to dating sites and apps. Now, perhaps, it is more difficult to find a service that does not have a built-in video chat. This trend began to gain momentum a lot during the Covid-19 pandemic and continues to this day. It is unlikely that the tendency will reverse.
Let's summarize
As you can see, the world of online communication is changing really fast. And we will certainly see many new trends in the future. Perhaps the principles of communication might change, and we will all use VR and AR technologies instead of video chats, thereby transferring all communication to some kind of metaverses.
Objectively speaking; as long as there are no serious preconditions for contemporaries to drastically change the format of communication, these trends are likely to be with us for a very long time. However, in any case, you should follow the updates and not miss interesting new products. The new products will never stop coming as long as we live!
* This is a contributed article and this content does not necessarily represent the views of sciencetimes.com
